The wheel of life turns, the beginning of the week comes round again and with it the latest edition of Whewell’s Gazette, the weekly #histSTM links list, bringing you all the histories of science, technology and medicine thrown up on the shores of cyberspace over the last seven days.

One of the posts listed this week under Earth and Life Sciences has the title Alfred Wallace Co-Discovered Evolution, But You’ve Never Heard of Him, now this is not an old post recycled here for your entertainment but one posted on 8 July 2016 on the website Curiosity an Internet presence of The New York Times. Why am I going into so much detail about when and where this article appeared? Quite simply because if you are in anyway interested in the history of biology or the theory of evolution and you have never heard of Alfred Russel Wallace then you have been living under a stone for the last ten years.

Unfortunately this phenomenon of publishing ‘you’ve never heard of him/her/them’ articles about figures who have figured extremely large in #histSTM over, shall we say, the last ten years is not restricted to Alfred Russel Wallace; Alan Turing, Lise Meitner, Rosalind Franklin are names that immediately spring to mind from a list that grows from year to year.

Even if the #histSTM figure you are writing about is veiled in the mists of obscurity and genuinely deserves to be better known, I personally think you should resist the desire to use the clichéd, click bait title ‘you’ve never heard of…’ and make the effort to think of an original and more appropriate title for your piece. If however you feel the necessity to write the thirty-seventh article this month about how Rosalind Franklin was cheated out of her rightful recognitions for the discovery of DNA or the twenty-fifth article since Easter about how Alan Turing invented the computer then please, please don’t think that you are saying anything that hasn’t been said all too many times already and don’t whatever you do title it ‘you’ve never heard of…’!

If you wish to write about these people then find a fresh new aspect of their life and work to write about, there are still some out there, and give your work an interesting original and fitting title. Having done so you will have made a genuine contribution to the pool of Internet #histSTM knowledge and saved the world from yet another hackneyed cliché.

I think it would be for the best if we all agreed to ban ‘you’ve never heard of…’ to some dark and distant impenetrable corner of cyberspace to wither, fester and die a highly deserved death.

Quotes of the week:

“Is it really “Newtonian science” that helps us to navigate around the solar system or just the bits we find useful?” – Peter Broks (@peterbroks)

“Short rant: “the Victorians” were not a homogeneous group with matching values, beliefs, and cultural attitudes” – Jennifer Wallis (@harbottlestores)

“Historian isn’t just a profession, it’s a life” – Kean History Dept. (@KeanHistory)

“Historians will always get the last word” – Kean History Dept. (@KeanHistory)

“The history of science records the discovery of things assumed the same being different, and of things assumed different being the same” – Liam Heneghan (@DublinSoil)

Juno: “Hey this is really great! So how long before I’m done science and I come home?”

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced” ― James Baldwin h/t @berfrois

“I don’t understand how it’s undemocratic to challenge the result of a non-binding referendum that, if carried out, would destroy the country” – (@gimpyblog)

“I feel I sound unhinged and unprofessional reminding folks that history, not emotion, has cautioned us not to blindly trust our government” – Jamilah Lemieux (@JamilahLemieux)

JD Bernal anticipates Hasok Chang: “One of the advantages which we now gain by studying the life and work of past scientists is the number of unworked-out suggestions which they contain, pregnant for future development. This means a large part of their work was wasted in their own time, not because they could not have developed any of these points taken one by one, but because it was not physically possible to develop them all themselves, and they lacked sufficient schools of co-workers capable of taking them up.” h/t @GWilliamThomas

This portrait of Jacquard was woven in silk on a Jacquard loom and required 24,000 punched cards to create (1839). It was only produced to order. One of these portraits in the possession of Charles Babbage inspired him in using perforated cards in his analytical engine. It is in the collection of the Science Museum in London, England.Source: Wikimedia Commons

Montage of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, in a composite image depicting part of Jupiter and their relative sizes (positions are illustrative, not actual). From top to bottom: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto.Source: Wikimedia Commons

3 Responses to Whewell’s Gazette: Year 2, Vol. #48

Yes, you are correct in saying “…if you are in anyway interested in the history of biology or the theory of evolution and you have never heard of Alfred Russel Wallace then you have been living under a stone for the last ten years.” However, it is almost certainly true that a much lower proportion of the ‘general public’ (i.e. most readers of “The New York Times”) have probably heard of Darwin, but not Wallace.

For which there is a very good reason, Darwin having, as even Wallace acknowledged, done far more to establish the theory of evolution by natural selection than Wallace had. However I think that anybody in the education system today discussing the theory mentions both Darwin and Wallace.

Hmmm – Darwin certainly did more, but Wallace comes a close second. Certainly no other biologist who has ever existed, apart from Darwin, did as much as Wallace in defending and elaborating the theory of natural selection. In some key areas (e.g. modes of speciation), Wallace came closer to the truth than Darwin. So, in my opinion there is no “very good reason” that Darwin is so much more lauded than Wallace. Actually, I supposed there IS a very good reason – and that is that historians and others have tended to focus on Darwin to the exclusion of everyone else – meaning that Darwin gets even more of the credit than he deserves!